The ability to provide an accurate and complete modeling of teeth is an important element in the growing field of computational orthodontics and other computer aided dental treatment systems. Current techniques for impression-based computational orthodontics are limited to crown modeling of the patient's tooth, such as the capturing of crown and gum shape information, but do not capture or utilize corresponding root information. As a result, such impression techniques do not provide for the root component within the present tooth model, and fail to account for root movement and/or interaction within the gums, thus limiting the ability of the complete tooth model in facilitating orthodontic treatment. Such failure to account for root movement can also result in root collision that hinders the orthodontic treatment process.
A complete tooth model, comprising both root and crown components for each tooth, could be extremely beneficial for providing optimum diagnostics, treatment planning and analysis, such as for example, in stage planning and simulation, collision detection, finite element analysis, biometrics and mass property calculations to name a few.